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Oscar never discussed running again

Oscar Pistorius never discussed returning to the track during therapy sessions after his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was shot dead, the High Court in Pretoria heard on Monday.


“He did not show any intention to continue with his career,” his psychologist Lore Hartzenburg said under cross-examination from prosecutor Gerrie Nel.

“The severity and the degree of post traumatic stress disorder suffered by Mr Pistorius, we took one day at a time.”

Nel asked if she, as a trauma counsellor, did not give the paralympian any hope for the future.

“I’m asking you why you did not discuss his continuing [of] his career,” he asked.

She replied: “He did not want to discuss that. In sessions he was so tired that sessions could not take place.”

She said Pistorius indicated that when the trial was over he wanted to go to Mozambique to work with children at his uncle’s school.

Nel asked her if she knew that Pistorius resumed training.

She said she knew he ran one day because the media reported on it and that he trained in the gym.

On September 12, judge Thokozile Masipa found the paralympian not guilty of murdering Steenkamp, but convicted him of culpable homicide.

Pistorius shot Steenkamp through the locked door of a toilet in his Pretoria home on February 14 last year, apparently thinking she was an intruder about to emerge and attack him. She was hit in the hip, arm, and head.

Masipa said that there was no basis for the court to make the inference that Pistorius wanted to kill Steenkamp.

She said evidence showed that Pistorius acted negligently when he fired into the toilet door knowing there was someone behind it.

With regard to firearms-related charges, Masipa found Pistorius guilty of firing a Glock pistol belonging to his friend Darren Fresco under a table at Tasha’s restaurant in Johannesburg in January 2013.

However, she found him not guilty of shooting through the open sunroof of a car with his 9mm pistol while driving with Fresco and ex-girlfriend Samantha Taylor in Modderfontein on September 30, 2012.

– Sapa

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